Family Story as Political Science: Reflections on Writing Trapped in America’s Safety Net

andrealouise

Intimate ethnography presents a number of challenges: How could I write about my own family in a way that was true to their experience but also an “objective” report? How could I convey telling details without robbing my family of their privacy? How could I rein in my emotions to report their story, and did I pick and choose facts to protect them or to make them more sympathetic? How could I generalize from their experience to that of millions of social assistance recipients? In this Reflections essay, I consider these challenges in light of what other social scientists have said about the issues of close work with individual, sometimes vulnerable, research subjects. [Read more.]

Family Story as Political Science: Reflections on Writing Trapped in America’s Safety Net by Andrea Louise Campbell / Perspectives on Politics / Volume 13 / Issue 04 / December 2015, pp 1043-1052